


Across the Spéir

by vands88



Category: Campaign: Skyjacks (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Gable POV, Good Omens influence, Lore - Freeform, Other, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, only covered a hundred years because I am weak, this is gonna be immediately jossed but idgaf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 06:50:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19901569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vands88/pseuds/vands88
Summary: Long before the stars fell, and long before they were destined to sail together in the skies, a nameless winged being took watch over the island where a young boy named Travis Matagot would be born...





	Across the Spéir

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sonofahurricane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonofahurricane/gifts).



> Gable/Travis for sonofahurricane for the prompt: “When you live forever, fate has a weird way of making sure you cross paths. They've crossed paths before. Show me when?”
> 
> I fell for this prompt SO HARD but it also meant I had to make up a whole bunch of lore and backstory and my approach to kanan was already rather ~flexible~ to say the least so… you might wanna think about this as just another of Spit's wild stories.

***

Long before the stars fell, and long before they were destined to sail together in the skies, a nameless winged being took watch over the island where a young boy named Travis Matagot would be born.

The bountiful island was a siren’s call to sailors. It beckoned them to its shores with its promise of food, and home, and shelter from the seasonal storms. But the island was hungry too. It lured these good folk in with glimpses of money and power, until good sailors turned into greedy pirates, bringing more and more riches to its shores.

It was amongst these desperate shores, on a perfect full moon on an eerily still night, that the cries of a newborn echoed across the lush forests and deep ravines of the island, so loud and captivating, that even its guardian was enraptured.

The nameless winged being understood little of its fascination, only that there was something about the child that was not human. Or, rather, something that implied that it would not be human for long.

***

The being was called away from the island before its curiosity could be sated, and it did not stumble across this oddity for many years to come. When it did, it was halfway across the Spéir in a place not many dared to roam.

The human child had aged a dozen or so years. He had tanned skin and a blond patch of messy hair upon his head. None of this was unusual. But the fact that he was drowning __was__.

The child was thrashing against the clutches of a most fearsome beast pulling the child further, and further, below, into the depths of the sea.

The being could not say why this particular disturbance called its attention like a tug on a taut string, for man’s vessels and sea creatures clashing in the vast depths of the big blue was an increasingly common occurrence which rarely called for intervention, but the child… the child needed to be saved. 

In search of understanding, the being slipped into the child's mind, recounting his life from conception to this moment in time, looking for the frayed thread that lead to this unplanned event.

Island. Isolation. Adventure calling…

 _ _Ah, yes,__ the being concluded, __of course you came to the sea__.

The deep had always been a casket for those who wander. Not this soul though. Not yet.

The winged beings that patrolled the skies were not known for their kindness, but with a flick of its feathers, this one propelled a current of water from the deepest, darkest, depths of the ocean to free this child from the clutches of the beast.

The boy sprawled on a beach, some hundred miles from the decimated vessel, spluttering sea water out of his breathing apparatus as he looked to the skies for an answer. He would not understand for many years to come exactly how he was saved.

***

It was only some eight years later when the being heard a scream across the Spéir and felt the string tugged once again.

The being had been called to a dark room in a shanty town that reeked of magicks. The iron tang of power and the mists of deception were so potent that the being could barely sense its charge through the distortion.

But, there he was. Twenty or so years of age. Unnaturally gaunt. Once-blond hair now magicked grey. The haze cleared until the being could see the true soul beneath. The shimmering red eyes.

The boy was a human no longer. His fate had been sealed. This changeling was born not out of want, but out of desperation; a truly foolhardy act.

If the being was capable of emotion, it might have felt something akin to pity as it witnessed its young, naive, charge, scream late into the night; for it was the only other soul in the Spéir that knew that he cried, not at the grind of bones and melting of flesh, but at the loneliness that even this animorphic change could not erase.

 _ _This has not changed anything,__ the changeling thought bleakly as he finally saw through new avian eyes. His heart lay heavy even as his new body soared.

***

The years soon after became hard to track, when the seas turned and the seasons were no longer sequential. There was a great change in the air that troubled even the mighty winged beings that watched over the Spéir. It was then, along with the stars, that a winged being fell from the skies.

**************

It wakes - because apparently it now __wakes__ \- on an island which was once very familiar. Bountiful. A den of pirates and thieves. The birthsite of the most curious human that it had ever encountered.

It knows this, but it doesn’t know __how__ it knows this, as all these meager physical eyes can see is yellow. Not the individual grains of sand and their previous wholes. Not what creatures stir miles and miles below the surface. Not whose feet have imprinted their fleeting feelings onto the ground. Just… __yellow__. All the knowledge that it possesses - that it has fallen, that it has fallen on this particular island, that it is now constrained to a humanoid vessel where it once was free - is simply a shadow of the knowledge it once knew; the breaking waves on this singular island, not the unfathomable depths below.

The once-being feels its first emotion and it’s something akin to grief.

***

The once-being struggles to its feet under the midday sun and, like the multitude of humans that came before, follows its grief to a tavern.

Walking is strange, doors are strange, textures are strange, talking is… __very__ strange. But, drink, as it turns out, is less strange, or rather, makes the strange less potent.

The once-being is three drinks in - hands, mouth, throat - when it realises that while inhabiting a humanoid body, it should no longer be considering itself an __it__. It is now a person and people tend to have personhood. The only problem is that the once-being doesn’t know who they are, and as time slips by (now linear and incessant) taking with it more and more of the past, this quandary only seems to become __more__ potent. How can you be someone if you don’t know who you __were__?

It’s as this thought is being considered that a familiar face swims into view. The boy. The man. No, the __changeling__. Pale skin, white-grey hair, eccentric clothing, looking eternally young, even though… by human standards, by now, he probably shouldn’t be.

“You do realise you’re naked, yes?” he says, his eyes roaming (suggestively) over the once-being.

It - no, __she__? - looks down at __his__ \- no, her? - body and, confused, looks back across at the changeling with a frown. “Naked?” they ask, because it doesn't know any other way.

The changeling throws back his head and makes a cackling, rumbling sound. __Laughter__ , a distant knowledge supplies, __a sign of joy__. “I know it’s been a __day__ ,” he says, gesturing around the building that houses alcohol, as if there is some kind of conclusion to be gleamed from the surroundings. Is it not usually so empty? So bloody? “but last I checked, it was still customary to wear clothing when patronising an establishment, even at the end of the world.”

“Clothing…” the once-being murmurs as the true meaning of ‘naked’ clicks into place. She - he? - glances at the other bodies in the building - most dead, but some unconscious or in a sombre drunken stupor - and finds that they are all clothed. It - they? - waves its hand over its body with the clear intent of materialising clothing. None appear. The crushing weight of grief sinks back inside its body.

“Are you… alright?” the changeling asks.

The once-being startles just as the outreaching hand is about to touch skin. The wooden stool clatters to the floor in their haste to get away. “No,” the once-being says, because it - they? she? - hasn’t yet learned the art of lying. “Please don’t-”

The changeling raises his hands in a pointless, confusing gesture as he steps away. “Sorry. Er, yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to -” his face does something which is far too complex to translate in this corporeal form it now inhabits. “I’m Travis. Travis Matagot,” he says after a moment’s hesitation, hand outstretched in the customary human greeting.

“I know,” they say, too fast and too strange, “I mean, I don’t know that I know. I know nothing.”

“Riiiight,” he says, and the hand is lowered before they can even take it. “Well, I’ll be-”

“No.”

“I’m sorry?” he says, turning back round, where he had been leaving.

The once-being frowns in thought - can feel the muscles being pulled taut as if from memory and knows what it looks like but doesn’t know __how__ they know this - as confusion piles atop confusion. It doesn’t want the changeling to leave them in this state. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t… being... rude. I just don’t… have a name. I don’t even know if I am…well… if I __am__.”

The changeling - Travis - raises an eyebrow and downs the nearest abandoned drink. “Oh, boy, one of __those__ days,” he says, like existential discombobulation is a regular pastime. “We’re going to need a __lot__ more to drink.”

***

That night, the storm comes. The once-being lies awake, alone, amongst the debris on the blood-stained floor, and stares at the thatched roof above them, protecting them from the raging storm, and wonders how it can sustain such battering when all else around it has failed. __Gable__ , a distant word comes to mind. __Gable__.

***

In the morning, Gable hears rumour that a white snake found its way onto a merchant vessel leaving the island and wonders if the changeling survived the storm. It’s very troubling to Gable that they would no longer know if he had perished at sea as a distant memory seems to recall that they once would have known.

By evening, Gable can no longer remember why they were concerned about a snake, because it was a man they met last night, wasn't it?

***

The island is in ruins so it takes Gable another week, waiting patiently by the harbour, for another sailor to dare approach the sea.

"Heard the seas are so treacherous now," the sailor says as she sets the sails on a stolen vessel, "that folks are talking about this magic weave that's meant to take you up into the skies. Sounds like balderdash to me, but what do I know? Saw things I never thought I'd see this last year. Flying ships wouldn't be the worst of it."

The sailor - Riviani - talked. A lot. It was a new experience for Gable who had spent all the time they could remember in silence. Even the creatures and demons that came slinking out from the sea while they sat here waiting tended to leave them alone. 

"But the only way we get to find out if it's balderdash is sailing across the damn thing that's likely to kill us. Get to some real land. Get some real answers. Assume you're out here for the same?"

A question. A question directed to them. To answer. "I don't...I don't remember," Gable says. "I wanted to leave, but I… do not remember why."

Riviani frowned at Gable, like this was a genuinely strange response, and maybe it was. "Your memory got messed up in the endtimes or something?"

"Yes," Gable says, "That must have been it. I remember... very little."

"Trust me," Riviani says with a cheeky wink, which, oddly, reminds them of white-grey hair and strong drink, "That's a blessing."

***

Riviani's vessel barely makes it out into the deep before the demons come for them.

The boat is turned to splinters and Gable drowns, or thinks they drown, before they find themselves sprawled upon the dusty streets of a city.

They don't know how, and don't question it; forgetfulness is a blessing in this world after all.

***

Gable tries to find work in the city but the Spéir is in ruin and Gable doesn’t know if they have any craft skills, or a last name, or where they were born, and a lot of people don’t trust a person unless they know these things. The only people, it turns out, who don’t ask questions, are the people in the underbelly.

Gable quickly develops a moral compass by undertaking a lot of immoral work and discovering what is acceptable (stealing from the dead, defending clients, trading questionable goods) and what causes an unbearable itch (the rest of it). With the money earned, Gable acquires clothes, food, shelter, and a jagged rusting dagger from a backstreet dealer.

A few months in, Gable discovers that they have other needs too. There is a girl, named Marina, with a bright smile and short curly hair, who looks after the new giant birds that the cartel have wrangled. Gable goes over to see the birds, and instead, sees a lot more of the girl.

Marina doesn’t seem to mind that Gable is so strange. She takes their hand and walks them through the melding of bodies and afterwards gives them a kiss so sweet that it still echoes - painful, and deep - when Marina is killed two weeks later.

***

Gable leaves the cartel in a haze of fury - the itch having flared into an insatiable burn now that Marina’s blood stains their hands. Gable picks up Marina’s fallen sword and goes to the blacksmith, “Make it… I dunno, stronger somehow,” and it comes back nearly as tall as Gable themself, and as deadly as it should have been all along.

Gable goes to the paddock and lets free all the birds that the cartel do not deserve without Marina’s love and care. A giant white bird pauses outside the paddock and looks at Gable in a very odd and specific way that reminds them of someone that they once knew.

***

Some years later, the rumour about featherweave is proven and within the decade, all ships are sailing in the skies.

Gable signs up as a bodyguard for a rich corsair and his crew. After two decades in this city, some are starting to notice that Gable - or, “the tall one” - doesn’t seem to age. Gable doesn’t know why their skin doesn’t wrinkle in the same way as others and assumes it has something to do with the endtimes, but it seems to unnerve people, and so they decide to set sail for new land.

On their last day in the city, they head to the tavern with the intention to indulge, and when they catch eyes with a handsome young man with wild white-grey hair, they know __exactly__ how their last day shall be spent.

There’s something familiar about his easy charm as they talk and drink and he plays card tricks with a cocky kind of confidence that makes Gable’s heart squeeze tight. On the third drink, Gable notices the dozen pocketwatches lining the inside of his jacket, and the man - Mitchel Tanner - puts away his cards.

“Trying to keep track,” he explains with a wave of his hand, “You know how it is. Never know what time, what day, what __season__ it is. I’m… looking for a pattern.”

“There is no pattern to madness,” Gable says, world-weary, and downs their last drink. “Lay with me,” they say, arm outstretched in an invitation to the familiar stranger, “I’m sure we could both use the distraction.”

Tanner doesn’t object, but he does leave their bed before the sun sets, and Gable, for some reason, doesn’t find this odd at all.

***

Approximately five decades later, Gable has changed crews and cities and ships more times then they can count. Mostly, it’s because the work is tiresome, but sometimes… sometimes they fall in love with the work or the people or the sunset over the mountains when someone’s gaze lingers on them for just a fraction too long and they know that the questions are coming.

They leave, then, before they have to lie. It’s been eighty-some years, but Gable still hasn’t quite worked out how to do it without that uneasy twist in their stomach.

This one could have been avoided. Gable slipped up - mentioned a nation that long ceased existing - and the quartermaster narrowed his cold, grey, eyes at them.

Gable takes their leave and stands on the raised veranda overlooking the forests and mountains set in twilight, a forgotten drink in their hand. In the distance, their ship awaits - one of the last majestic vessels that knew sea before it knew sky - and with a heavy heart, Gable knows that they cannot return. It might be many years before another cargo ship comes to this remote region, but perhaps a respite from the cities might do them some good. They can learn to milk cows, or weave blankets, or whatever it is that they do in the country.

“You’ll want to go now,” comes a voice from the darkness, “they’re coming for you.”

For a moment, Gable thinks its nothing but their own anxieties manifesting, but the voice is too distant, and too __distinct__ , like a fond memory…

Gable hastily turns towards the edge of the veranda where the voice had originated but all they see is a flash of white disappearing into the darkness, like the beat of a bird’s wings. Gable shakes their head, certain that the drink has gotten to them, but when they follow the flight path, they see someone else moving in the darkness.

The quartermaster, his cronies, and the glint of blades.

Gable sighs tiredly and downs the remainder of their drink, ready for the confrontation. Their long sword, ever a comfort, sits on their back, but they know if they are to pull it from its sheath that they will never be able to live peacefully here; not when the villagers witness the bloodshed. Perhaps the forest spirit is right...it is best to leave, and it has given them ample time to do so. They could still slip into the shadows after him...

Gable’s hand reaches for the rough wood of the railing, and then, without further hesitation, jumps into the depths of the forest below.

***

The giant birds which were once a novelty are now carried on every vessel - legal and otherwise - sailing around the Spéir. Some cities celebrate them with crafts or races or bird shows. There’s even a cult who believe the birds brought peace to the endtimes. Not that Gable believes it, or even that they’re past the endtimes, but the birds still enchant them as much as they did when they were first under Marina’s hand, and they take a job as a bird handler, and then another, and then, somehow, they find Metatron.

***

“So, uh, Gable,” the little pale one - Dref - asks, looking down at their application, “what skills can you bring to the Uhuru?” He swallows then, as he looks a very long way up to Gable and the equally long sword on their back as if this ought to be answer enough.

“A bird, a sword, and a lifetime-” or __several__ lifetimes “-of experience.”

“You’re in,” says Captain Orimar, standing up abruptly from the table and outstretching his hand to Gable’s.

They shake it; bemused by his sudden acceptance, but not going to question it.

“Meet us on the deck in five.”

“Oh- Okay. Okay, thank you, Captain.”

He leaves, the little one running after him, and Gable stands there, still a little shocked that they bluffed their way on to the infamous skyjacks ship so easily. There's a familiar shuffling noise from across the tavern and then a drawling voice, "He likes birds."

"W-what?" Gable says as they turn to see the man addressing them. A long overcoat, white-grey hair, boots kicked up on the table, casually shuffling a deck of cards in his hands.

"Our great and formidable leader. He likes birds."

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Gable asks incredulously, because despite the surface-level irritation, there is something stirring beneath.

"Travis Matagot," he introduces, raising his hand towards them, more like he's expecting a bow and a kiss than a handshake. "Pleasure to meet you."

"Gable," they introduce, pointedly ignoring the hand.

He huffs and returns his hand to the shuffling of cards. The movement causes his coat to flutter and Gable glimpses what must be two dozen pocketwatches lining the inside.

"Huh," they say, suddenly recalling a city some hundred years ago, "I used to know someone who did that."

"Did you now?" he asks with a smirk lining his lips. "How curious."

He kicks out a barstool with a foot, inviting them to join. Gable looks at that easy, familiar smile, and knows that it'll be a hard one, this time, when they have to say goodbye.

**************

Sometimes, Gable dreams. They dream about an island, about a young boy, about the swirling depths of the sea. Sometimes they carry their dreams into the waking world, and sometimes, when familiar white wings soar against the night sky, Gable wonders if they might not be dreams at all. 


End file.
